The World A.T. Ways

In which #langchat connects our community

Barbara Lindsey — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 22:35:30 +0000

Every Thursday night (8-9 p.m. EST: Time zone converter) for the past four months language educators across the United States have been meeting online to discuss and share ways to improve their professional practice. They do this using Twitter, the free online service that allows you to send out public or private messages of 140 [...]

In which new courses are charted for languages

Kevin Gaugler — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 14:46:08 +0000

In March I spoke at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tenneesee about the future of language education and post-secondary education as a whole. Particularly, I set out to speak about the ACTFL map for 21st Century Skills and how I designed and have been teaching for nearly a decade a course that attempts to fosters 21st century skills [...]

In which Gapminder addresses the connections standard

Barbara Lindsey — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 01:01:11 +0000

A great session I attended at NECTFL 2011 was The Impact of the National Standards on Language Education & National Initiatives with Marty Abbott, Eileen Glisan and June Phillips. Shared in this session were the results of a national (U.S.) survey of world language teachers on how and to what extent the Standards for Foreign [...]

In which UDI principles support all language learners

Barbara Lindsey — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 00:37:30 +0000

In the early nineties a blind student enrolled in my beginning level German course. In addition to her guide dog, she also had a student assistant who would help by describing to her the texts and graphics he saw displayed during class and tell her what I and the other students were doing. Since I [...]

In which Spanish for the 21st century is introduced

Kevin Gaugler — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 12:50:18 +0000

Last year, for the first time, I taught an intensive two-week pre-college Spanish summer course at Marist College. In designing the course I set out to produce a 21st century Spanish composition and conversation course. In the class students discussed global issues, enhanced their media and information literacy skills, explored Hispanic culture in their local [...]

In which 6 ways are presented to teach culturonomics

Kevin Gaugler — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 19:25:01 +0000

I’ve included here the audiovisuals for my recent presentation at NECTFL 2011. The idea for the talk is the result of my own observations about my students’ inability (even my best students’ inability) to say numbers beyond 1000. Apparently, speaking about numbers and with numbers constituted a low-frequency activity in the language courses with these [...]

In which we show what you can learn (& use) from google labs

Barbara Lindsey — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 16:38:00 +0000

Kevin and I will be co-presenting at the Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages this weekend. We hope to give language educators an opportunity to explore the ways in which some of the currently experimental google lab projects could be used to support our language learners. What’s particularly intriguing is the way in [...]

cAsTa Ways: An Interview with Larry Ferlazzo

Barbara Lindsey — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 04:31:14 +0000

Prior to becoming an ESL and social studies teacher, Larry Ferlazzo served for almost two decades as a community organizer. “Organizing,” Larry told us in our interview, “is just another word for relationship building.” Good teaching anchors learning through relationships—relationships with our peers, with our mentors, with members of our close and extended communities. We [...]

In which educators crowdsource teaching ideas

Barbara Lindsey — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 00:06:23 +0000

Just under an hour ago, Tom Barrett, originator of the Interesting Ways series, started a new series on Google Forms in the Classroom. He used Twitter to invite educators to join him in creating this Creative Commons licensed work. In less than one hour (!) contributors from all over the world built this document from [...]

cAsTa Ways: An Interview with Travis Allen

Barbara Lindsey — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 16:14:12 +0000

For Travis Allen the gift of an iPhone for Christmas in 2009 quickly became much more than the increasingly common rite of passage coveted by many American tweens and teens. As you’ll hear in this interview, the iPhone profoundly changed how Travis experienced himself as a learner. At the time, Travis was just seventeen. We [...]